Bombing, Abortion, & Down Syndrome

I was horrified to hear the news accounts of yesterday's bombings in Iraq. For the terrorists to use two innocent women with Down syndrome to carry out their evil intents was beyond barbaric. Civilized nations all over the world have condemned these bombings as senseless acts of cowardice.

And yet I feel it is the height of hypocrisy that the vast majority of society today will continue to actively embrace and encourage "termination" of fetuses diagnosed with disabilities encompassing a wide range of severity, including Down syndrome.

Read what prominent Baptist minister John Piper had to say about yesterday's bombings on his blog this morning:

Bombing, Abortion, & Down Syndrome
Posted: 02 Feb 2008 09:44 AM CST
(Author: John Piper)

Al Qaida has moved another step toward western standards of abortion barbarity in using Down Syndrome women to blow boys and girls to pieces. The news is that this was not suicide bombing, but the detonation of retarded girls at a distance.

The disgust one feels for the kind of heart that does this could reveal to England and America how we should feel when we screen for Down Syndrome babies and then kill them. Compare the stories:

Story One: al Qaida

At Breitbart.com (and most news sources), it is reported that yesterday al Qaida used two women with Down Syndrome to bear the explosives under their clothes and then were detonated remotely killing over 70 people.

Two women suicide bombers who have killed nearly 80 people in Baghdad were
Down's Syndrome victims exploited by al Qaida.

The explosives were detonated by remote control in a co-ordinated attack after the women walked into separate crowded markets, said the chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad General Qassim al-Moussawi.

Other officials said the women were apparently unaware of what they were doing in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert toughened security measures.

Story Two: Abortion

Medical News Today:

Although no national data are available, the abortion rate of fetuses with the condition [of Down Syndrome] was found to be 59% in one California study and 92% in an English study.

Steve Calvin at Physicians for Life:

I believe that we are at a tipping point. The counterweight to societal support
for people and families with Down Syndrome is the expanding availability and
promotion of prenatal DS screening tests. When DS is confirmed, abortion is
offered. Increasingly, it is chosen. In England and some major U.S. cities,
more than 90 percent of DS fetuses are aborted.”

New York Times, with reference to Detroit, MI:

Until this year, only pregnant women 35 and older were routinely tested to see if their fetuses had the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome. As a result many couples were given the diagnosis only at birth. But under a new recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, doctors have begun to offer a new, safer screening procedure to all pregnant women, regardless of age. About 90 percent of pregnant women who are given a Down syndrome diagnosis have chosen to have an abortion.